I try too, but I don't get New Stuff that often. And I've used Apple computers since 1999, so I don't really know what's out there in the PC universe.
I will say the Cloud helped me a year and a half ago when my iMac's hard drive died. Fortunately, when it happened, I was up to date with OS downloads, and whenever there was a new one, I set up iCloud. I only set it to store files and things, not programs, which of course use lots more space. And I never looked at it to see what was there. I had no idea, really, how it worked.
When the drive crashed, I first spent hours and hours on the phone with Apple tech support. I didn't pay for that; and my computer was far from still being under warranty. But they were happy to help. And had me do the same thing for a really long time, though it never worked. Finally they made an appointment for me to go to the nearby Apple store the next day. Once there, they did more diagnostics and pretty quickly determined that the drive was... dead. They said the computer would last a few more years if I got a new one, and so I left the machine with them to take care of that.
Before I left, I asked if I'd be able to recover my files from iCloud. He said nah, he really didn't think so. Depressed, I returned home. Wondering what iCloud was for, if not that. But I'd lost my data before, and figured I could deal with it.
It took them longer than I thought it would to install the new drive, which, after all, isn't a very complicated job if you're a techie. But I'm not a techie, and I wouldn't even have known how to get the case open. When I got it home, I crossed my fingers and turned it on. And after a few minutes, to my astonishment all my folders and files began to repopulate. A MIRACLE!! Even my Safari bookmarks had somehow been preserved. And I didn't even have to do anything to make all that happen!!
I was too lazy to go back and tell the Apple Genius about it...
